McTaggart on Time (Part 2/2)

[@BrunoCruz2129]

That is so amazing! I'm glag that there is something so good and usefull on the KZbin. Keep it up!

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

+Bruno Cruz Thank you! A new one is on its way; I've been detained by the annual job market. Get ready for some Plato soon... :-)

[@BrunoCruz2129]

Awesome!!!! Hey, Today I had a test about the concepts of the time travel of David Lewis and I tough super cool the way it is connected with the series A and B. Could you make a video about it? I think it would be perfect for the way you work. :)

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

+Bruno Cruz Haha, yes, I have some footage for a Lewis video, eventually... after the intro to Plato... :-)

[@mingkwongpiano]

Thank you from Hong Kong for making these videos!

[@houseironblades6412]

Hey, thanks for taking the time (see what I did there? LMAO) and effort to make this video. I got a good laugh out of the captions and got a better grasp of McT's arguments.

[@donaldjanuik]

Masters in Phil student and loving these videos thus far.

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

That's so lovely to hear! Thank you and cheers!

[@ninjazii]

Possibly the best explanation of the A & B Series of time. Thank you !!

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

+ninjazii Thanks for watching! I hope to have the new video done by the month's end... The close of this semester has kept me busy!

[@gedde5703]

Absolutely fantastic. I am beyond grateful. I haven't found anything comprehensible after hours of googling and wanting to pull my hair out. Not only is it understandable, but it is comedic, entertaining and informative all at the same time. No pun intended. Again, thank you so much.

[@jujufifi]

You made it so simple!! Finally!! Thanks!!

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

Thank you very much!

[@keithbessant8346]

Thank you, this is the clearest explanation of the B-theory I have ever found. Amazing that this explanation of the B-theory was just part of a critique of McTaggart's ideas.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

I'd definitely enjoy videos of just you talking at the camera. I certainly enjoyed the comical aspects of this video, but i don't think it's why people are watching them. You seem to have a talent to explain stuff very coherently, so i'd very much appreciate if you did videos on philosophers frequently not understood at all like the german idealists. There are hardly any videos on hegel that i can definitely tell are more than bullshitting e. g. Anyway, you've earned a new fan

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

Thank you so much! More videos are on the way!

[@Zoharargov]

Great vid, would love to see more!

[@rootedinrighteousness]

This material is exceptionally helpful. The detailed and clear explanation of the arguments is helping me to come to terms with these ideas a lot faster. Since exams are fast approaching that is much appreciated. Thank you!

[@xxjuiceboxx9]

Fantastic! Thank you so much! Really helped clarify the regress argument against the classic response to the contradiction argument.

[@PessimisticIdealism]

Would you be interested in making more videos related to McTaggart’s idealism? Namely his demonstration of the existence of spirit and the non-existence of matter in “The Nature of Existence”?

[@Alsssssss]

thanks for this, it really helped my understanding on the topic!

[@briantrujillo4441]

Thank You so much for these videos!

[@KSachi-pc7sn]

Very useful for my study!

[@gayamitsume140]

Great video , i love how you explain things professor, but i’m troubled with one argument and I have to ask , why can’t the A Theorist specify time in the B series but continu to claim that times flow from future to present to past as oppose to the B series where event are locked ? after all both agrees on the order of events and both should agree on the relations between event (after and before ) but the A series will claim that what happen on particular Wednesday will keep moving in the past wheareas the B series will claim that what happen on wednesay not only remain in Wednesday but also maintain the same position in time .

[@jazminkathrin]

Amazing! I was trying to understand this theory and this video just made it a bit easier for me although I still have some problems with it because English is not my native language and I think philosophy is one those subjects that understanding the words really matters. Can I ask you about time loops? I want to know if hypothetically in a fantastic world we get stuck in a time loop what about time? the present is: past and future and present at the same time? or is it a good example of Mctaggart's argument so A series' and B series' theory is not true in this case? by the way, Thank you, you are awsome!

[@nyvang6969]

Great, great, great :) thanks for an excellent description.

[@nyvang6969]

and it was very funny as well, thanks :)

[@okzoia]

Dr. Bowers: My suggestion is inspired by Michael Dummett's writings and the mathematical intuitionists. How about doing a video on the difference between the Principle of Bivalence (the principle that every (well formed) sentence is either true or false) and the Law of Excluded Middle, the theorem of the propositional calculus (Either P or Not P) which results in a necessary truth for every substitution instance of the variable, P. Bivalence logically entails the Law of Excluded Middle, but not vice versa. How is this significant, or is it?

[@everythingisfake7555]

The regression series of questions made no sense to me, what does present in the past mean? But what I get from McTaggart’s idea is this: What position is now? You cannot say now is now, because you will go in a loop, so you just end up using the b series where the present is removed. So if you say something happened in the past, if you are using the a series and saying these tenses have qualities outside of the relationship to one another, then when is now? The present really is the focus of this paper I believe.

[@davidwright8432]

Hi Jason! I enjoyed the videos, and (I claim!) understood the points you made. Please go on making them! Rome wasn't built in a day, etc. One stylistic point: I'm a great fan of both Python (caught the Inquisition ref!) and Sesame st. But every so often, take a breath of a couple of seconds to let stuff sink into the pumpkin-pie filled minds of the audience. (Yes, this is Thanksgiving time.) A series (no pun! Honest!) of one-liners punctuated by moments for reflection (charming mountain scenery, pastoral music for a few seconds). BTW - what happened to McT's C series? Coming soon in Part 3? Anyway, you DO have a growing fanbase! Be encouraged.

[@Skm567-p9g]

Great video!!

[@15PinkDiamonds]

its a great video! but just maybe a little tip, maybe when you have those speech bubbles maybe what you write in it is what you're going to say? I can't really concentrate between what you're saying verbally and whats written in the bubble. But still helped me for my midterm this week thanks :)

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

+Ivy the GoPro Thanks! I agree. There's a lot of information, presented rather quickly. Future releases will be more paced. Thanks for watching! ^_^

[@noahwyss417]

i had a toe curling aha-moment dude, thanks

[@stevetatlow1987]

Absolutely perfect

[@blazmaverick]

I've come to subscribe to something like a "growing block" in which the past, present, and future are all real and change is constantly occurring along the whole stretch. The past is growing more and more "tight" and static, while the future remains "loose" and indeterminate. The present is the interval in which conditions are sufficiently "tight" and "loose" for consciousness to exist. This set of ideas compels me to think that the physical universe as a whole must be changing against some sort of background, and I speculate that the background, "outside," is perpetually changing and totally chaotic, with nothing having duration or order, so that the only constant is "timeless change". It can be seen as a constant shuffling of possibilities from which our universe arose, being a set of momentarily actual elements that happen to respond to each other's presence, and to the presence of anything and everything else, by persisting in their relationships to each other. Time is the response of the spontaneous upwelling of order which is the physical universe to the perpetual buffeting of the chaos outside. This is the only idea that I've come up with that can make sense of time in my mind, and I'm sure it doesn't make sense at all. However I also think it's a bit foolish to expect reality to make sense to me, or to anyone, at the ultimate levels that we did not evolve having to think about.

[@DrBowersOfficeHours]

There's some literature on this; here's my favorite counter-argument: pages.shanti.virginia.edu/merricks/files/2010/05/Growing-Block.pdf. Thanks for watching! ^_^

[@vernongrant3596]

Thank you for all your good work. If time is flowing doesn't that mean we're living on the edge of infinity?

[@rebeccalovitch8504]

I would love to hear your ideas on the philosophy of time as written in Slaughterhouse Five.

[@metatron4890]

So events have properties of past, present and future? I thought that saying some event was was prior to the present was just a description of the event and not intended to suggest that event have properties.

[@kbchristiansen]

Very nice video - and I really like the fast clipping, sound and motives. Two things bother me somewhat. First, why are you not dealing with McTaggerts argument on C series and non temporal orders of events as real? I think he leaves a door open for further studies and new questions. Second, in explaining change and or the lack of it a B series McTaggert mentions the impossibility of events to disappear in time. Is that not the "real" argument for the B series not being able to account for events to change? I am not in any way certain, that I understand McTaggert, but that is not keeping me away from taking a position in the matter :-)

[@keithbessant8346]

In the B-theory, If each moment in time is separate from the next, does this mean that things just exist in the moment and don't have any duration? For instance if you had a bicycle and replaced every part of it, traditional ideas about time would cause us to puzzle over whether it was still the original bicycle at the end. But if everything is different moment by moment, this isn't such a problem. The B-theory seems to be saying that all moments in time are eternal and will always be. Does this mean that everyone who has ever lived is still living because the moments they lived in are eternal?

[@brunoadipietro]

Awesome video, man! Thank you very much! I finally understood the A and B series! Hehe! Well, I'm going to follow your channel from now on and I would like to see more videos! I suggest a very interesting subject (from my point of view at least): reason x emotion. I heard that David Hume once wrote that the reason does not decide anything, it only shows the score between one emotional dispute! That is, I believe, a huge curve ball to those who put so much faith in reason! And I kept wondering if reason exists at all!! xD! I guess is a good topic! Thanks for now!

[@mr.jugglenuts6720]

C-theory, all the..."time"! Great video, cheers from Sweden

[@daleg.9673]

Why doesn't the passage of distances on a roadway cause similar confusion? Towns we passed, are passing, or will pass in the future (on our drive cross country)are always a fixed distance from one another (theory B), but we can still speak of them as being 100 miles ahead, right here, or 20 miles behind us, or whatever the case may be (theory A). There is no confusion in talking about places being behind or ahead of us so long as we agree on our present location. So why is there a problem with the passage of time? I'm missing something here.

[@everythingisfake7555]

Those things are objects and the system used to communicate distance is just an agreed upon thing by humans to communicate. I could come up with my own system that measures things by pigs “that object is about two healthy pigs away from the other object”. But, when you point to “now”, what are you pointing to and from what position are you pointing to it?

[@isabelad8853]

AWESOME video!!!!

[@gerardlabeouf6075]

Thanks brooo he is a bit niche here but quite an interesting guy

[@rosan932]

Thank you thank you and thank you You have been so simple in your explanation.. please keep on making videos on what your studies on your university it’ll help the students like myself thank you - also it’s be helpful if youd put your references on where you found the information from 😂😁😁😁

[@ravi95730]

What's the soundtrack?

[@abhiraghavan7261]

More time and space please , and theory of knowledge .. and existentialism

[@bigpapichampagne745]

God sent !!!!

[@mr.jugglenuts6720]

How about a video on Bonjour´s Coherentism (the kind he later abandoned) and that I have expanded upon. If you require material on the subject, I have written my bachelor thesis on the subject. Contact me if you are interested.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

Amazing explanation. But uaaahh stop the music 😂

[@kevinkago3492]

absolute idealism

[@rogercantero5259]

No es posible el presentismo...porque cuando decimos que solo existe el presente..ese presente es indefinible en relacion a algo Mc Taggart tenia razon .

[@dan87siv]

please.. keep doing it. I myself already had plans of doing this. just an add. perhaps McTaggart got that epiphany that Wittgenstein had that we only have a language problem, not a time problem. static, move, calendar.. how can we understand justice, truth, God.. just like time.. I agree with McTaggart, time does not exist! but now another problem.. exist. Another Verb.. and then the eternal relativism of Derrida in differance? reference... scales... measures.. language.. human limitation? everything put into words (signs) will be limited, and referential.. like time (or calendar, or clock or the moon, or the sun, or the leaf?)... time, like God, is dead? but still, they exist as language, as abstract language.. are we any means between concrete and abstract laguage? even physics notion of space time (could it be actually space-space, and we never realized it?).. so there is not such thing as time? but after all, still being abstract, time still exists.. at least as language, and like a limitation of our own body, we can only understand time by calendars and clocks.. like universe dimensions.. like 2D, 3D, 4D... should we restrict to our limitation? will we overcome that? do we need a new body? man... need a beer.

[@hsab5927]

and people accuse Jordan Peterson of using a word Salad!

[@gerggergungson7885]

i think its all just word play. i like presentism, but obviously the past is real, it happened, we talked about it. am i missing something? why is it an issue if i believe time flows, but use a static model of past and present (cant measure the future). saying that because choosei explain it with a static diagram, i dont believe in linear movement. Im a bit uneducated, im trying to understand, but i feel like its just wordplay right? do people believe time isnt real? am i dumb lol?

[@markIOP123]

McTaggart's philosophy on time is out dated and plain wrong as Newtonian physics was supplanted by Einsteinian physics, McTaggart's ideas require revaluation. During his time instruments like the LHC had not been created, and this is important, the reality of particle physics and the time of their existence proves the "present" nature of time as McTaggart states does not exist. As matter accelerates towards the speed of light and collides with other matter "particles" are created with life times so short the mirror idea of "present" becomes redundant and as faster and faster particles are created shorter and shorter times of real matter comes into existence. A new Theory of time is required to explain what the real world has been uncovered by experiments and scientific inquiry. To present Mctaggart's Theory as truth is like the earth is flat.